For­mer prime min­is­ter and en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s si­lence on the specifics of what he de­scribed as a pro­vi­sion­al Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence by the US gov­ern­ment to T&T.

T&T has been grant­ed a six-month win­dow un­der a new­ly is­sued Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence from the Unit­ed States Trea­sury De­part­ment, which will al­low Gov­ern­ment and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to for­mal­ly en­gage in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela on the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on gas project.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath is call­ing on all cit­i­zens to do what they can to help oth­ers, em­pha­sis­ing that even small acts of ser­vice can il­lu­mi­nate lives and com­mu­ni­ties.

Unit­ed States en­er­gy econ­o­mist Fran­cis­co Monal­di has de­scribed the grant­i­ng of a new li­cence for T&T to pur­sue de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on gas field with Venezuela as “good news,” not­ing that this coun­try re­mains an “al­ly” of Wash­ing­ton.

In­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­tant and for­mer Ja­maican am­bas­sador Cur­tis Ward says the Unit­ed States does not need a base in Grena­da to act mil­i­tar­i­ly against Venezuela, as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to wel­come US forces to T&T rep­re­sents a break with Cari­com’s Zone of Peace pol­i­cy.

As the Gov­ern­ment pre­pares to un­veil its 2026 Bud­get on Mon­day, a sense of un­ease hangs over the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. While some stu­dents ex­pressed cau­tious op­ti­mism, oth­ers voiced deep anx­i­ety.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has hit back at for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul, ac­cus­ing him and the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of at­tempt­ing to “sab­o­tage the re­vival of the coun­try,” fol­low­ing Dhan­paul’s warn­ing that T&T could be head­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) giv­en the cur­rent state of the econ­o­my.

For the past decade, T&T has con­sis­tent­ly pri­ori­tised ed­u­ca­tion, health, and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in its na­tion­al bud­gets, ded­i­cat­ing the largest shares of ex­pen­di­ture to these three pil­lars re­gard­less of fluc­tu­at­ing rev­enues and fis­cal deficits.

Po­lice are await­ing the re­sults of an au­top­sy to de­ter­mine the cause of death of a one-month-old ba­by boy, who re­port­ed­ly had bruis­es on his body.

A 63-year-old woman, de­scribed by po­lice as hav­ing a men­tal dis­or­der, is be­lieved to have lived along­side her moth­er’s de­com­pos­ing body for weeks be­fore be­ing dis­cov­ered in Ari­ma on Wednes­day morn­ing.

While he ac­knowl­edges that a re­cent uptick in mur­ders was un­for­tu­nate, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the most re­cent spate of mur­ders was not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­lat­ed to the ac­tiv­i­ties that sparked the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, as they each took place in a dif­fer­ent part of the coun­try and un­der dif­fer­ing cir­cum­stances.

Nine­teen peo­ple, in­clud­ing a com­pa­ny di­rec­tor, are ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned af­ter they were de­tained dur­ing a ma­jor po­lice raid on an il­le­gal quar­ry­ing site along Tumpuna Road South, Ari­ma, ear­ly yes­ter­day.